New technologies have always enabled new criminals. Mail fraud laws in the United States date to 1872, suggesting that the first hundred years of national mail service in the country included a few felonious hiccups. Just 4 years later the telephone was invented. A new platform for new forms of fraud to which my grandparents’ generation is still particularly susceptible.

The first quarter of the 20th century introduced radio and television. These broadcast technologies proved less useful as a tool for criminals, since broadcast media largely removed the element of anonymity that letters and phone calls can afford.

Then came the internet. Your dad might have called the whole thing a scam in the 90s, since he had a perfectly…